


We Wear Each Other's Heads Like Hats

by Zee (orphan_account)



Category: Community
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abed's buddy cop show goes horribly awry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Wear Each Other's Heads Like Hats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarin/gifts).



> The title is from the lyrics of the song "Alley Cats" by Hot Chip. (And of course it's also a reference, to the Troy and Abed skit at the end of the claymation skit, because I'm a dork.)

"Rolling in 3.... 2.... 1.... go."

Troy's out-of-character eyeroll lasts a second too long, and when he turns to face Sarah, his reluctance clearly shows in his body language.  It's frustrating: Abed had thought that Sarah, a random classmate from Anthropology, might give a lackluster performance, but Troy is usually much more enthusiastic.

"Oh, Sarah," Troy says, his voice flat.  "I know this relationship might interfere with my job, but I just can't resist you.  I don't care that I'm being reckless."

"Oh, Troy," Sarah says.  She looks very uncomfortable, and there's no chemistry at all between them.  Abed really wishes that Annie would've agreed to play this part.  "Yes, yes, please take me back to your place.  Forget about the case that you're working on, forget about your partner Abed.  None of that matters."

"None of it," Troy says, and then turns to face the camera.  "Man, what the hell?"

"Cut!"  Abed puts his camera down, sighing in frustration.  "Is it too much to ask that we get through one scene?'

"This doesn't make _sense!_ "  Troy says.  "Throughout our whole series, it's just been you and me, fighting crime.  And now all of a sudden, my character is just going to throw that away to hook up with her?  Why?"

"Because you're a ladykiller.  In order for that trait of yours to keep being believable, you have to have a love interest.  It just makes sense." 

"You know, you didn't tell me that I was just going to be his lame-ass love interest," Sarah says.  "You told me this was a cop show, I thought I was gonna get to shoot shit!"

"Mmm, no.  You're offscreen during the final shoot-out with the bad guys," Abed says.  "Can we get back to the filming now?  I have a test to study for."

"Oh, whatever," Sarah says, throwing up her hands.  "I'm done with this.  You guys are weird.  See you in anthro, I guess."  She rips off the blonde wig and leaves the study lounge.

"Great," Abed says.  "Just great.  You know, for such a handsome young man, you're very bad at romantic scenes."

Abed expects Troy to get mad at him for that, and then he could get the conflict for the episode in another way, but Troy is giving him a weird look.  Studying him, kind of.  It makes Abed feel very uncomfortable. 

"Why does my character have to be a 'ladykiller' in the first place?  Why is that important?"

"It's part of the formula.  We're making a buddy cop show, and I'm the shy nerdy one and you're the handsome, suave one."

"Okay, but--it's not like we're giving my character a regular girlfriend, right?"  Abed shakes his head.  "So then what's the point of just having her around for one episode?  Doesn't that just make me look like kind of a dick?"

"She's there to test our bond."  That makes Troy blink hard, which Abed ignores.  "Ultimately, you have to make the choice between romantic love or the mission.  In order to convince the audience of how important we are to each other, there has to be conflict.  We already shot the episode where you take a bullet for me, so this is the next step."

Troy stares at Abed for a second.  His left eyelid twitches slightly, a reaction that Abed is now used to from him.  "This is such _total bullshit._ "

"Well, it is clichéd, but--"

"No!  No, I didn't mean our show.  I meant, you."  Troy leans across the table, eyes narrowed, pointing his finger just inches from Abed's face.  "This is because I tried to kiss you the other day." 

Abed feels his shoulders tense up slightly.  His nostrils are flared as well, and there's a tightness in his stomach.  He needs to calm down.  "I don't know what you're talking about," he says, cringing inwardly at his own denial-heavy response.

Troy picks up on that too, and he actually laughs, although he looks a little sick about it.  "Dude--come on, it's not like I was being subtle about it.  I tried to kiss you, you ducked, and then we went back to coloring in our Ninja Turtles coloring books."

"Is that what you were doing?  I didn't realize.  I thought it was some kind of dance move."  Abed is vaguely aware that his voice has speeded up and flattened out, so that he sounds even more like a hyperactive robot, but mostly he just wants to be out of here.  He eyes the door, considering a run for it.

"Don't try to act all clueless about it.  You always use that to cover up for yourself, but I know you pretty well by now."  Troy's not laughing anymore.  He's starting to look hurt, which is the last thing Abed wants; it's why he ignored the kiss in the first place.

"I--"

"I know you pretty well," Troy continues, speaking over Abed.  "And so I know that you're not just _oblivious_ to me hitting on you, you've just been _pretending_ to be.  And now you've written some love interest for me into our show to just drive home the point that you and I should just be friends.  That's it, huh?"

"Well, and also our show needed some conflict."  He's panicking, so he just says it to fill the silence, to create more of a buffer; plus, his voice is also continuing to do the robot, and he knows his body language is stiff and standoffish.  The net result is that even Abed can tell that he just came off as incredibly unfeeling.

Troy looks incredulous, then crestfallen, and then just pissed off.  "Screw you, man."  He removes his badge and takes his plastic gun out of his back pocket, slamming them both down on the table before leaving the room.  

Abed puts his camera down on the table next to Troy's discarded props.  "The conflict part is apparently not a problem," he says to the empty room.  

 

***

 

Abed goes back to his dorm and watches five hours of Friends reruns, pausing only to make popcorn and get bowls of cinnamon toast crunch.  After the fifth hour, his eyes hurt and he's started to fantasize about murdering Chandler, so he changes the channel, but nothing else grabs his attention.  

He'd like to just go to bed, but he's not really tired yet.  He tries to think of other things to do, but it's a foregone conclusion: he's already reaching for his video camera.  He syncs it with his laptop on automatic, and starts watching the footage he shot with Troy earlier in the day.  

There's the scene where they interrogate Starburns, and it's so good.  They have great chemistry together.  Abed barely even had to direct this scene, it just all happened so naturally.  And then the scene where Troy's character convinces Abed's character that taking risks and loosening up will help him solve the case--that might be Abed's favorite.  

He wants to stop the footage before they get to the scene with Troy and Sarah, but he keeps going in spite of himself.  He finds that he forgot to pause his camera when the scene cut; it kept recording.  Sarah leaving the scene, Troy accusing him of ignoring the real issue, Troy's feelings getting hurt.  

He watches the whole thing several times before he's finally able to stop himself.  He should talk to someone else in their group about this, probably; isn't that what found family is for?  Except that Annie, Britta, and maybe even Shirley would all tell him that he should be true to his feelings and take the risk, and Pierce--Abed doubts that Pierce would even understand the problem.  Jeff is the only one that would agree that Abed is handling the situation in the right way, and the thought that he might be aping Jeff's commitment-phobic approach to romance is incredibly depressing. 

It would be easiest if Abed could just say he wasn't interested due to straightness, but they had that conversation as part of the Christmas Special last week.  In fact, now that he thinks about it, Abed realizes that Troy's kiss attempt came just a few days after his bisexuality reveal.  Maybe Troy has been interested in him for a while, but only recently thought he might have a chance, or maybe Troy just hits on anyone he might possibly have a chance with.  Probably the former, not the latter, because Troy might pretend to be that kind of person, but actually he isn't at all. 

Abed ignored the kiss because he didn't know what else to do, and he still doesn't.  He very much doubts that he can lie and tell Troy that he's not attracted to him, but the alternative is scarier. 

He finds Troy in the cafeteria the next morning, gloomily poking at some plasticized pancakes.  When Troy notices him, he looks happy for just a second before he remembers that they're fighting right now.  It makes Abed want to disappear into the floor, but he resolutely sits down across the table from Troy.  

"You don't have a tray or any food," Troy says grouchily before Abed can say hello.  "You shouldn't be in the cafeteria if you're not going to eat anything."

"I know.  I'm not hungry, and you're not eating your breakfast anyway, so I was hoping we could leave and go somewhere more private."

Troy glares at him, and takes a big bite of his disgusting pancake out of spite.  "And do what?" he says, mouth full.

Abed clenches and unclenches his fist on his knee, under the table.  "Talk.  I'd like to talk to you."

"Talk.  Right."  Troy is working himself up to a level of bitter sarcasm usually only attained by Jeff or Britta.  "Let's _talk_ about how my best friend didn't have the guts to turn me down directly, and instead he worked some _super subtle_ rejection into the screenplay of our show.  You wanna talk about that?"

Abed would rather be any-fucking-where else but here.  "Please.  Can we--will you just come back to my dorm room with me?  I know you don't have class for a while."

"I don't see why we can't stay right here.  This should be a short conversation.  How long can it possibly take you to say, 'I am not attracted to you Troy, and I do not want to make out with you, because apparently I have no taste.'"

And now Abed must lie, and do a bad job of it, and screw things up even more, or tell the truth, and doubtlessly screw that up too.  He spends too much time staring at Troy while trying to decide what to do, until Troy starts to pick up his tray and leave in disgust.

"Wait," Abed says.  "That's not it.  That's not what I came to say."

Troy sits back down, still looking very peeved.  "Fine then.  Say something else."

Abed presses his lips together.  He has to stall for time, until he can figure something out.  "I didn't know you liked guys."

Troy shrugs.  "You're the only guy I've ever liked."  

Abed is painfully envious of Troy for being able to say that with such ease, the same way he would talk about anything.  It's something Abed's always liked about Troy; he doesn't overthink things to the point of crippling himself, he doesn't second-guess people or try to manipulate anyone situations--he just puts himself out there and lets the rest of the world deal with it.    

"So why didn't you tell me you liked me, and wait for my reaction?  Why did you just try to kiss me out of the blue?"

Troy looks slightly embarrassed, and slightly sad.  "Honestly, I just kind of assumed you would kiss me back.  I thought you were just on that level with me."

Because they're on the same level with everything else, of course.  Abed is starting to feel slightly nauseous, and he can't look Troy in the eye anymore.  "I just want us to stay friends," he mumbles in the table's general direction.

"Sure, I want us to be friends too," Troy says.  "Problem is, if we hang out now, I'm just gonna be looking at you now and I just wonder why you'd be open to kissing other guys, but not me.  I mean, you told me you thought I was attractive when you were Batman."  

"That was a statement of objective fact, Batman only deals with objective facts," Abed says quickly. 

" _So_ not true," Troy says.  "Batman's like the most hot-headed superhero ever, even I know that, and I've only seen the movies!"

"Well, there's Batman, and then there's Bruce Wayne.  Batman constantly struggles with the suppression of his weaker, more emotional human side."

"Yeah, but--hey, you are totally changing the subject on me."  Troy's looking at Abed suspiciously.  

Abed panics.  "Well, I have to go, good talk, we'll just put our show on hiatus until you feel sufficiently over me--"

"Wait a sec.  You're right, let's take this someplace a little more private."

Abed has no choice but to follow Troy out of the cafeteria.  He could run, but Troy would chase him, and while Abed is faster, there are students all around and they would probably trip him up.  He tries to send a text to Jeff asking him to call Troy and distract him while Abed makes a run for it, but before he can finish Troy has led them into an abandoned classroom and closed the door.

Back when they first met, Abed had plenty of sexual fantasies about Troy that began just like this, before he started repressing for the sake of their friendship.  Of course it's all flooding back to the surface now.  Abed swallows hard.  

Troy leans against the door and folds his arms.  "So why can't you just straight-up tell me that you're not into me at all?"

"What do you mean?  I can tell you that."

"Nuh-uh you can't!"  Troy steps toward him excitedly and Abed steps back.  "You couldn't tell me when I tried to kiss you, you just tried to make my character straight so that I'd get the point, and you couldn't tell me in the cafeteria."

"I'm just trying to let you down easy."  Abed hits a desk with the backs of his knees. No further retreat is possible. 

"Nope, it's not that.  You never care about letting people down easy, not even me."  

Troy has kept an almost-respectful distance between them, but now he leans forward, putting his hands on the desk behind Abed, on either side of Abed's hips.  Abed can tell what he's trying to do: cage in Abed's body to create physical intimacy between them, but it backfires.  Between Abed leaning back against it and Troy putting his weight on it, the desk scoots back with a screeching sound.  Both Troy and Abed lose their balance and stumble, and Troy pulls back, embarrassed.

"Uh, sorry," Troy mutters, and the tension is significantly lessened.  Abed can see what will happen next: he'll say 'it's okay,' and then 'can we just be cool now?' and Troy will be slightly deflated but he'll have lost his seducing momentum.  He'll just say 'sure,' and they'll leave the room and start talking about something else, and Troy might be bummed out with an unrequited crush for a while, and maybe they'll even have another tense conversation about it, but eventually someone else will notice that Troy is handsome and amazing, and Troy will notice them back.  And he won't ever try to kiss Abed again. 

Abed opens his mouth to say 'It's okay,' but instead he finds himself stepping forward into Troy's personal space.  He kisses him awkwardly, and immediately steps back horrified at himself.

It happens so quickly that he thinks maybe he imagined it, but Troy is staring at him with wide eyes now, so no such luck.  "You--huh?"  Then he grabs Abed by the shoulders and hauls him in, and this time the kiss lasts longer, with a significantly higher amount of tongue.  

"I don't get you," Troy says before kissing him again.  _I don't get me either,_ Abed wants to tell him.  _I don't get any of this, I never knew what to do with it until now._

"I'm sorry," he says instead.  He closes his eyes and rests his forehead on Troy's shoulder.  "I just didn't want to risk our friendship.  It seemed safer to try and lie."

"You're not risking anything."  Troy pushes his cheek against Abed's, nuzzling him slightly.  "I'm always gonna be your best friend, okay?"

Abed abandons any and all pretenses of coolness and clings to him.  "Okay."

 

 

 


End file.
